Mad Dogs and the Galloping Fever in Glasgow in 1712 #History #Scotland

In 1712, the Reverend Robert Wodrow hanged his dog:

‘The week before [c.17 September, 1712], and the beginning of this [“greatest land flood”], before I went east, the doggs turned many of them mad. I hanged mine, and soe did severall others in this parish. I hear many horses are bitt by them in the neighbourhood. This, with the small-pox and measles, and a sore throat, with a feaver of three or four dayes, called the ” Galloping-feaver,” and by some ” the Dunkirk sickness,” was first in Edinburgh, and then at Glasgou, and all the West country. I hear last Sabbath, the third part of the people of Glasgou wer not in the Church, noe family almost escaping it. All thir seem to say, there is a malignancy in the air; and, if mercy prevent not, may forbode a pestilentiall distemper!’ (Wodrow, Analecta, II, 90-1.)